REAPING THE BENEFITS: Intensive agriculture has prevented significant greenhouse gas emissions, Stanford University researchers say.
Image: US DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Modern high-yield farming lowered the amount of greenhouse gases pumped into the Earth's atmosphere toward the end of the 20th Century by a massive amount, according to a surprising study from researchers at Stanford University.
Technological advances in agriculture helped reduce greenhouse gas output by reducing the need to convert forests to farmland, the study said. Such conversion involves burning of trees and other naturally occurring carbon repositories, which increases emissions of carbon, methane and nitrous oxide.
If not for yield improvement techniques, which have dramatically helped corporate farms produce more crops with less land, authors of the study said an additional 13 billion tons of CO2 would have been loosed into the atmosphere per year.
"Our results dispel the notion that modern intensive agriculture is inherently worse for the environment than a more 'old-fashioned' way of doing things," said Jennifer Burney, lead author of a paper on high-yield farming to be published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Overall, the study estimated that new farming methods averted emitting as much as the equivalent of 590 billion metric tons of CO2. That translates into as much as a third of the world's total greenhouse gas output since 1850, a date often cited as the start of the Industrial Revolution in the West.
The production and use of fertilizer has led to significant greenhouse gas emissions, Burney said, but that increase pales in comparison with what might have been had more forests and grasslands been shifted to agricultural uses.
"Every time forest or shrub land is cleared for farming, the carbon that was tied up in the biomass is released and rapidly makes its way into the atmosphere," said Burney, who is a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford.
A co-author of the paper at Stanford, Steven Davis, added that the evidence points to spending on agricultural research as one of the best and cheapest ways to prevent new emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
To conduct the study, the academics looked at agricultural production between 1961 and 2005 and compared it to hypothetical models that estimated the amount of land that might have been converted if not for the so-called "green revolution" in modern farming. They found that improvements kept at least 317 billion tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere and possibly as much as 590 billion tons.
The researchers conclude by arguing for improvement of crop yields as part of any policy meant to reduce greenhouse gases.
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
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9 Comments
Add CommentI don't know what planet you guys have been visiting, but you should know by now that GLOBAL WARMING WAS A FRAUD!! The UN IPCC made up most of the information it used to start this Fraud and many of those currupt scientists have already been fired.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere have major Science magazines like yours been? Are you in the pocket of the Al Gore Gang? Have you purchased the "Carbon Credits" that made him $300 million?
Come on guys. Wake up.
Thomas Nickelsen
Though poorly stated, themuser has a point. All the study looks at is carbon. There's a lot more to the global warming equation than that. So the title is unwarranted. Also, climate change isn't the only issue affected by modern farming. Climate change is worrisome in large part because of its potential to affect biodiversity. If modern farming decreases biodiversity in other ways, it may not be a net gain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBeyond that we really need to know a lot more about the study before we can draw conclusions. For example, the gloss given seems to suggest that the study compares land use of modern vs. traditional farming given current population needs. But there's a real question whether we would have current population levels if we didn't have modern farming practices.
It's impossible to know without seeing the actual study, which I haven't, but from this gloss it seems that the authors may have drastically overstated the overall significance of their results for setting policy.
eddie - themuser sounds a lot more like an uneducated Democrat than an uneducated Republican.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't have much faith in the models that predict catastrophic global climate change, at least not due to CO2 though other natural forces are certainly capable and all the more reason to place our efforts on real threats and not the vague possibility that we might see slightly warmer winters. Never the less I think that urban vertical farms, as well as permacultures of forest lands and many other approaches to feed our billions of hungry mouths while not destroying the natural legacy our planet holds for us in its undeveloped form. The loss and fragmentation of once complex interconnected systems with their incredible diversity and adaptability honed over millions of years would benefit from our learning how to live more intelligently and compactly on the land and the ocean.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll of that increased productivity, measured in increased biomass, was created using petroleum derived fertilizers and pesticides. That petroleum was taken out of sequestration and put back into the carbon cycle increasing the net amount of carbon in the cycle, so just how can the claim be made that modern agriculture hasn't exacerbated human induced global greenhouse effect (Global Warming)?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@alpheus68, "so just how can the claim be made that modern agriculture hasn't exacerbated human induced global greenhouse effect (Global Warming)?" the article states that it lowered the amount of CO2 released, not that it eliminated it, and this is in comparision with earlier trends such as clear cutting trees. Cutting trees can be a triple whammy as you are releasing CO2 by burning the tree and increasing production of methane through the decomposition of the parts of the tree that were not burned while reducing the earth's ability to sequester CO2 by reducing primary productivity. The amount of CO2 released by fertilizer may have been less than the effects of clearing a forest. It is all relative.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'd like to know who funded the study. Not, of course, that the source of the money would ever have any effect on the conclusions reached...........
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks for your completely nonsensical commons. Instead of using the usual tactics (insults, conspiracy theories about corrupt scientists, Al Gore, pay offs, money grabs, blah blah blah, etc) why don't you try challenging the actual science once in a while?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh, yeah, I forgot. You guys don't actually know any science....
I hate to say it but it is a real possibility that in order to save the planet ThomasN and his like may actually have to be put down. Either that or we will be forced to revoke their right to not understand science.
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